


Mine Eyes

by wilderwisdom



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Blindness, Fire Lizards, Gen, References to Suicide, Social Issues, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 08:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilderwisdom/pseuds/wilderwisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Touring, Menolly stumbles across a talented young lad, whose predicament is far too familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Breathless with the resounding chorus of her last duet, Menolly retreated, smiling still and bowing, to her seat. Sebell plucked gently at the opening chords of his next song on his travel-harp?this ballad did not require her accompaniment on pipes or gitar. Her lips remained smiling, eyes on his player’s face, as she lifted a cup of the woody spiced wine served in the late summer in Balen Hold.  She thought how well the tawny firelight looked gilding the strong line of his jaw, his weaving fingers, he soft waves of his curling hair. Sparks leapt up behind him and danced away towards the night sky—for even the great hall of the Hold would not easily accommodate the number of people who had gathered to hear the visiting Harpers. Sebell had insisted that they would serve _all_ those who would listen, and the season was warm yet, even so far north as Balen. Menolly’s gaze lingered on her spouse’s muscled throat, a gently quivering pillar of creamy gold in the firelight, and she marveled at the good fortune of their mutual regard; she found herself spinning a strand of  honey-red hair between string-callused forefinger and thumb as she contemplated the… _intimate_ …pleasures of their relationship. Once, she had thought that she would never be able to love again; Sebell continued to prove her wrong each and every day. She knew the slight grin on her face would have an intoxicated cast, but she did not care.

Wherever they went, they were always entreated to play. Menolly never tired of it, and Sebell usually didn’t mind. Sometimes Menolly thought a lifetime of music would not be enough for her, and took any and all excuses to play. It was best in smaller Holds like these, where rowdy drinking songs and epics and sensitive ballads were equally welcome, where a performance from a masterharper was as vaunted as a Gather Day. Balen Hold was starved for music if any was. An oversight had left the small holding Harper-less for nearly two months after the sudden espousal and relocation of the current journeyman five months previously, and the death of the resident master soon after. Sebell, who was touring at the time, had offered to accompany the replacement journeyman to his post. Balen put Menolly strongly in mind of Half-Circle—almost a sea hold, small and closely knit, grown peculiar in its isolation. She found the likeness hardly hurt at all; it was so long since anywhere but the Harper Hall had been home. The little irritations troubled her no more than the rough cloth on the scars of old grievances, but often she had to guard her tongue against unfair presumptions and curt replies to people who had never done her any wrong.

Menolly flicked her eyes up to the shadowy eves of the hall beyond the ring of firelight. Beauty, Rocky, Diver and Kimi lounged cat-like among the shingles, eyes whirling slowly now and then beneath a few lids. The rest of her fair lay with Branth—for it was T’gran who had brought the new Harper from the Hall and had remained to hear the Masters play. He was deep in his cups now, head down on the table by Menolly’s elbow, and Branth lay drowsing nearby, gorged on wherries of hospitality. Menolly smiled, knowing well there would be no moving the Brown Rider to-night. She sighed. With a dragon to occupy the blue and greens at least, she could manage to be less conspicuous. It was worse in small holds where fire lizards were less common; she could get away with just Beauty twined ‘round her neck because of the Mastercrafter’s knot on her shoulder—which was just as well, as the little queen rarely left Menolly’s sight. Rocky was at hand just now as well, as Beauty had clutched a few weeks back and their affection was almost draconic in its unique strength. Kimi, in turn, was expected to rise soon, and as such, Diver would not be separated from her by a winglength. It was odd, but also oddly pleasing, Menolly thought, how modern dragons were developing an almost fidel loyalty to a single mate. Menolly could nearly see and touch the currents of change that gripped Pern, and delighted to be a part of them. This, as much as music, was what it was to be a Harper. She felt she’d been singing two songs at once so long now it had gotten into her blood.

Menolly set her empty cup on the tabletop, and instantly a serving-girl stepped from the shadows to the space at her side, pitcher in hand. Menolly’s eyes were instantly caught by the girl’s movements—close, tense, half furtive. She kept her head down, and dark hair come loose from a drudge’s braid _almost_ obscured the shifting of her eyes. Perhaps she saw Menolly waiting, and she bent, collecting exhausted dishes from the spread, her face turned away from the rest of the high table, the Holder and his Lady. She spoke.

“A word, Master,” she whispered through taut lips. She went on filling cups, continued speaking in a low voice under the shroud of the music when Menolly nodded assent. “I would beg a favor of the Harper Hall.”

“And what would a kitchen maid request of the craft?” Menolly inquired behind the rim of her cup.

The girl, no tasks left to make a play of being busy at, retreated to the shadow behind Menolly’s chair. “The Holder’s third son? Jessom. When you go, take him with you, to the Hall. No good can come of his remaining here. Please.”

Intrigued, Menolly toyed with the food on her plate, replied in equally low tones. “Even a Harper cannot go snatching Holders’ sons from his very home with impunity. Am I to beg the parents’ leave to abduct their child? How am I to know he would be worth the Hall’s trouble? Or even suited to Harping at that?”

The girl’s voice was flat. “If you would enquire of him, go elsewhere than to the Ladyholder or her spouse.”

Surprised—she‘d had little truck with either so far—but catching her footing, Menolly asked, “What is this Jessom to you? Why risk a beating to see him gone—”

There was an ardor in the girl’s voice as she answered too soon. “Because he will not! Because I would have his attempts at suicide ended, before one of them succeeds.” She was flustered now, but her voice was hidden in the swell of music as the crowd joined in singing the well-known verses. Suicide was a private affair; a sad, if accepted aspect of weyr life, ignored in holds and frowned on in crafts, but personal, private. What could interest this drudge so much that she would intercede on behalf of another? “Please, lady, hear me out. There is _nothing_ for him here, nothing left but pain. I want him to be able to play again.”

“If I wished to know more of this?” Menolly began carefully, perfectly aware—as Elgion had not been, years before—how disastrous a false step at this point could prove.

“His sister is sympathetic, but she doesn’t know what I?she does not comprehend the severity of the situation, she cannot see why Jessom must go.”

“I see.” Menolly murmured, applying herself to the glazed fish on the table before her, aware of Sebell’s eyes lingering on the pair of them although his song never faltered a beat. “Could you point him out among those at table?”

The air stirred as the girl shook her head. “Jessom isn’t here. He does not eat in the main hall.”

“Ah.” Though still vague in detail, Jessom’s plight was becoming bitterly clear to her. “How can I find you again?” Menolly knew better than to ask a name outright; the false name the girl would probably give would not help anyone.

There was a pause of hesitation, as if the girl bit her lip. “If you must…tell the under-cook to fetch Kirie; he’ll be watching for you.”

Menolly nodded, concealing the motion with a sip of wine, and with a faint brush of wind, she knew the girl, Kirie, had slipped away. Her eyes bored into the blue heart of the fire, a penetrating, introspective sea-green gaze, remaining fixed there until the end of the set. She gave absent goodnights as Sebell half-dragged her to their room, and was so preoccupied that several seconds of his ardor were wasted on her until she became aware of his teasing, and responded, smiling, to his kissing.

Menolly was curious. The next day, when Sebell set out to visit Balen’s surrounding cots and shires, she decided to remain behind. She would ask, discretely, of the lord’s youngest son. She would watch him, and she would learn what prompted a kitchen girl to beg sanctuary for the Holder’s own son from a complete stranger.


	2. Chapter 2

“Jessom, you have to eat.”

Kirie’s voice held more exasperation than anything else. Which was better than despair, he supposed, but not by much. Though she had sworn not to give up on him—which was more than he was able—her voice these last weeks had begun to belie her hopelessness for this thankless task. He tugged at the cloth bound around his wrists; the cuts itched where new skin was beginning to form beneath the scabs, where he had ripped out the stitches. His gaze remained on his lap. Or would have, had his deep brown eyes been anything more than empty, useless orbs stuck in his skull.

Jessom felt her press bread to his lips, her fingertips playing lightly on his patchily shadowed cheek. “Please.” It was not an entreaty, a breathy whisper in his ear, nor was it a demand. Kirie simply expected more of him than this. He took the bread, bit off a heel and chewed it slowly. It tasted brown, earthy and thick with whole grains. He worked the break around his teeth, cataloging tastes, textures. Practicing.

The night he had cut himself, Kirie had come, lain with her body pressed up against his back on the narrow cot, gently stroking his tangled hair and damp eyelids in the empty dark. His world was always dark now, even in daylight, but Kirie brought color back with her. In the scent of her dark hair, the warmth of her skin, the unique music of her voice and the quiet susurration of her breathing, her gentle touch. She had fetched a whipping for her absence, he knew, though she had not told him. He could hear it in the ginger caution of her movement, the wince in her breath. Jessom did not know how he could go on like this. Their future had been ripped out of his grasp, just as he had thought to reach out his hand to take it. Kirie didn’t understand how he could try to take his own life—being craftbred—and indeed he was ashamed that she knew of it, but he could not live with the greater shame. She was a low-paid kitchen drudge with no family to speak of, and no one to speak for her. He was blind, a cripple, utterly dependent on his family for support. What little independence he had hoped to have from his father’s hold was stripped away in a single stupid accident. Without it, he could do nothing for either of them. A horrible stalemate, one he could not live with.

“We might be apart, for a while,” she was saying, “but no matter what, Jessom, I swear I _will_ find a way to come to you.”

Jessom choked on crumbs and spluttered. “What?” he demanded in a rasp, clutching the wooden arm of his chair, the other groping for hers. His face turned toward her out of habit, and he could feel the skin and muscle beneath contorted into an aghast expression. He could feel his sightless eyes flicking side to side, moving only from the lingering prompts of lifelong memory. He wondered if it disconcerted her, meeting his visionless gaze. Another weight, a shameful stone added to the pile in the pit of his stomach, a burning ache that never went away.

He could hear in the pause her hesitation, biting the side of her lip with her crooked teeth in the way that he loved. He knew her mannerisms by heart, and even blindness could not take that away from him. “I think.,” Kirie murmured hesitantly, “I _think_ I may have found a way out.”


	3. Chapter 3

A good part of the morning was spent in ineffectual inquiry, and getting lost in the warren-like maze of the hold’s passages searching after those who might be of help to her. Approaching the Lord Holder had earned her a blank look, a shifty-eyed glare of suspicion following hard on its heels. Taking the drudge’s advice, Menolly forbore to extend her inquiry to the Lady Holder. Instead, she made her way to the smoky kitchens below the hall; much could be learned over a cup of _klah_ that would not come forth elsewhere, even with a little gold dragon perched on one’s shoulder. The girl Kirie was nowhere to be found; the undercook, a balding uncle with deep-set eyes, turned her away with a mistrustful glare. Despite the knowing glances passed between the sweaty-faced workers at her investigation, it was incredibly easy to unearth the topic she wanted after the seeming pass-word had been given.

“Oh, aye,” lamented a round woman with more grey than brown in her hair, up to her shoulders in coarse flour. “’Twere a sad thing what happened to that boy. Sad indeed, weren’t it, Mavra?”

“Indeed it were,” concurred a bony, jug-eared woman at least twenty turns the senior of the pair. “He’d come down here and serenade us of an evening.”

“What a lovely voice that boy has,” sighed the first. “And none better with a gitar.”

“’Course, we all knew it were Kirie he came to play for.” Mavra let slip, coy enough that on another day, Menolly might have taken it for accident.

“You hush, now!” the first admonished the other sharply with a limp whack from the wooden spoon.

“I assume there is some sort of understanding between them?” Menolly jumped in, grasping eagerly at the break so fortuitously presented.

“Now, you listen here,” interjected the round woman, turning to jab her spoon in Menolly’s face; Beauty‘s hiss of indignant defense was short lived, sensing her mistress‘s lack of concern. “I’ll not be laying any further trouble at their feet. Besides, it’s none o’yourn to trouble about.”

Menolly firmly pushed the spoon away and straightened her shoulders; it would not do to rise from her chair, as she would tower over the woman who just now loomed over her, but she would not squander her advantage. “The Harper Hall bestows no judgment on affairs not its own.” she told the cook, though that was not strictly true. “As it happens, I have a particular interest in the welfare of both.” She slumped back easily in her chair, grinning impudently up at the drudge’s lined face in dead-on imitation of Piemur. She spoke softly, slipping into the kitchen-cant of her childhood. “I’ll not be runnin’ with no tales, Auntie.”

The eager one, Mavra, spoke up over top of her friend’s harrumphing. “They wanted to marry, y’know.” She tapped the side of her nose. “He spoke little of it, and Kirie there even less, but we all knew, or guessed as much.”

“How did the Holder respond to that?” Menolly wanted to know, leaning forward over her steaming mug. Most small holds had peculiar notions regarding rank, and Balen would be no different.

“Ha!” exclaimed the round-faced woman. “He dinna know, the great ox.” She seemed over her fit of sulks. “His Lady suspected, I think; she did _not_ approve.”

The sour-faced old man spoke for the first time. “They meant to run fer it, once Jessom his majority.” He scowled at Menolly, at the aunties, as if daring them to disagree. “They were gonna run fer it.”

Menolly tucked that away, swallowing the grimace of empathy that tried to twist her face. Harper’s delicacy was needed here. She rose, absently quieting Beauty, who fluttered her wings in agitation at being disturbed. “I thank you,” she said loudly enough that the surrounding drudges heard. “I mean to do what I can.” The round woman and her bony friend exchanged apprehensive glances at that, but it could not be helped. “Please, tell Kirie that should she ever want for aid, the Harper Hall will be at her service.”

Menolly found the Holder’s only daughter in the large, main room, carding wools with a number of upper servants. Emry was a rosy beauty, likely praised equally for her wide hips as her dimpled cheeks, Menolly supposed, here in this back country hold. Isolated holds were almost as bad as weyrs for breeding. There was much awe over Beauty roosted on her shoulders, a girlish laugh of delight, and solemn gratitude at being addressed directly by a Mastercrafter; her sanguine grin, however, was marred by a hint of sadness when Menolly asked after her younger brother. “Yes, Jessom was a wonderful player,” she told the older woman. Menolly had resolved to ask only the most circumspect of questions here, keeping in mind Kirie’s warnings. The girl spoke freely enough, but had to be prompted into it by direct interrogation.  “When he was young, he spoke often of going to the Harper Hall,” she smiled at the remembrance, acknowledging Menolly’s status with a gracious incline of her braid-bound head.

“ _Was_ a wonderful player?” Menolly echoed.

Emry nodded sadly, biting her plump underlip as she lowered her face. “He was always ’tuning,“ she said, and Menolly’s heart wrenched painfully in her chest. She was glad the girl was staring at her own lap; not even her Harper-trained features could suppress the pained grimace that flared at that simple verb. Emry took a breath before continuing. “Then he got so sick…and with his eyes, I think, he lost the will to play.” She returned to her task with redoubled vigor. “I’ve not heard him take up an instrument since.”

“A pity,” Menolly murmured carelessly. “I should have liked to hear him. The Hall is always in need of fresh talents.” She noted the brief tightening of cords in the girl’s neck. Of course, she’d say less than she meant, to an outsider and a Harper at that; Menolly could stick her thumbs through the gaps in the story Emry gave, but did not press her. She could fill most holes well enough on her own, and _would_ fill them all, soon enough.

Leaving the Holder’s daughter some minutes later, Menolly asked first one passing drudge, and then another, until one could be persuaded to tell her where to find the Holder’s youngest son. A series of drawn-out, roundabout questions led to a small chamber on the ground floor. When she knocked on the heavy door, a surprised voice bid her enter after a lengthy pause. The boy Jessom sat in a high-backed wooden chair, sturdy but unadorned as befit a hold like Balen. The heavy Thread-shutters were drawn and latched, and the room was the dim of twilight beneath the morning sky outside its walls. His skin had the acquired pallor of an invalid, ethereal in the gloom, and Menolly suppressed a shudder at her fancies. His head swung at the sound of the door clicking shut, the brush of her soft-booted feet on the rushes, and eyes so brown they seemed black skimmed like water-bugs in their sockets, not resting on anything, registering no comprehension.

“You are Jessom?” she queried, a little uncertainly. Instantly, those blind eyes jumped and seemed to lock on her face.

“Who are you?” he demanded in loud, bellicose tones.

“My name is Menolly,” she returned evenly, moving to take the only other chair, set close athwart the other. The slackening of his mouth in awe in recognition of the name was gratifying, and disconcerting. “I am visiting the hold on behalf of the Harper Hall.” She took note of the small intake of breath he gave at the mention.

“Yes; I‘m Jessom.” His voice lost none of its chariness as he shook straw-like hair from his face. “What do you want?”

“I am told you play.” Menolly half wished she had bitten off that last at the look of pain that tightened his face.

Jessom’s voice shrank in pitch, darkening like a thundercloud. “Not anymore.” He plucked at white strips of cloth binding his wrists, and Menolly sucked in her breath. She was not craft-bred, like Brekke, but nonetheless she had been raised to fear and abhor suicide in a fishing-hold where too many died at sea, or were taken by disease in the harsh winters. In the years since fleeing Half-Circle, Menolly had gained a more cosmopolitan philosophy, but this sickened her; Jessom was little better than boy. To keep her tongue from letting fall something she knew she’d regret, Menolly raked her gaze across the small, circular room, cataloging the empty fireplace, locked clothespress, the rumpled bed and closed windows. There was a writing desk, oddly enough, filled with reed pens and parchment; there was a sand table resting on top, and, strewn along beside it, lay several sheaves of hide, scored with the familiar staff and traipsing notes. She almost jumped up and seized the scores before she thought about it. Beauty trilled from Menolly’s excitement, and Jessom cried out in alarm.

“Oh, that’s only Beauty—a fire lizard,” Menolly said impatiently, fishing the little queen from around her neck and holding her, much like a cat its kitten, out where Jessom could touch her. Once the boy had discovered the little creature, she dumped Beauty in his lap. His face was washed with startlement as his fingers probed her tiny body, velvety wing-membranes; his expression melted, and froze, mouth open, as Beauty curled into his cupped hands, butting her tiny head against his fingertips, crooning. “These tunes,” Menolly turned and scooped up the hides, sifting hurriedly through them. “Are they yours?”

“…Yes, I—” Jessom murmured absent-mindedly, his hands still shakily exploring the length of her fire lizard, stroking, caressing, his face slack with wonder. Beauty thrummed, eyes whirling the blues of pleasure.

Intent on the scores in her hands, Menolly was just aware enough of the exchange to log it away for later examination…a song, perhaps. Her eyes following the spider-webbing pattern of blotted lines and tails and ink-spots, Menolly began to hum the tune written out, and then to whistle, wishing she had a pipe on her, or better yet a gitar. The song lilted from note to note in a tripping time signature, sprawling over several light-hearted keys. The next page held lyrics, and she broke into them without thinking.  The song was written for a tenor—just outside her mezzo range—and she modified it automatically, lifting the notations half an octave, murmuring the song under her breath. It was a love song, a sonnet set to music. Beauty’s chiming warble joined her in a higher duet, and she faintly heard Jessom laugh in delight. The ending flowed gracefully to the beginning of the next piece seamlessly, this a wistful, wordless air, and as she resumed humming, her voice broke a little as a single tear rolled down her cheek. For a minute, an hour, a day, Menolly stood lock-kneed on the sweet rushes, humming. While she was lost in the music, her mind raced.

After a long while, she turned back to the boy. Beauty dozed in his lap, curled between his broad-palmed hands, lulled by the music and Jessom’s caresses. For a moment longer, words escaped her, and Menolly blotted her face hurriedly on her sleeve. “Jessom…” she breathed, “these are beautiful.”

The door swung open behind them; a drudge backed into the room, bearing a single cup on a tray. She leered obsequiously up at Menolly from the dip of the half-bow her spine seemed fixed in. “Beg pardon, Master, but you’ll have to leave now.” She spoke to the boy in the chair as if Menolly did not exist. “Your lady mother was not best pleased with the waste of this morning’s dose.”

The sickly-sweet fragrance wafting from the mug hit Menolly like a bucket of cold water. Numb with fury, she held out an arm for Beauty to alight. She almost wished she could knock the cup of fellis from the nursemaid’s hand. “I _will_ be back, Jessom,” she called as she was shunted out the door like any old Auntie with her nose up someone else’s sleeve. “I mean to speak, at length, about those tunes of yours.” She did not care just how stupid that was to say aloud; the meekness with which the boy accepted the drug made her want to chew wood.

If she’d had doubts before, they were gone now. The lad’s talent was reason enough by itself. The Hall was always in need of composers, and Jessom’s songs touched a special place in her heart. As much as the Hall needed writers, the need for those with an empathetic skill was greater by tenfold. Jessom would be guaranteed a place in the Hall regardless, because of those songs. Many of the Masters would fight for his placement and the right to his tutelage. Menolly bit her lip. It was a risky predicament, one she knew all too well. It would not do to simply spirit the boy away, but given that, she would have. Gladly. Though beside the point, Jessom’s dilemma was a personal grievance to her. Anguished, Menolly wondered just _how many_ _more_ there were like him, like her, locked fast in a suffocating stalemate. Yanus had gone so far as to try and beat the music out of her. For his efforts or despite them, she had all but lost it; she would have, if not for that fortuitous fall of Thread, her unwitting Impression of those nine tiny lizards. She could only imagine what measures the lad’s parents might take against his musical bent. These isolated holds could be as backwards as backwards could be, she reflected with decided bitterness. She imagined that—like the crippling scar halving her own palm—Jessom’s blindness was counted as much a blessing as a curse.

When Sebell returned in the evening, thoroughly sun-burned even under his tan, Menolly had had time to seethe, and to compose herself. Diver chirruped welcome to his little queen, sprawled about her master’s shoulders. Menolly glanced up from where she sat on the bed, sheaves held loosely in her hands. Her spouse flopped down beside her, grinning like an idiot boy though his eyelids drooped from fatigue.

“I need to talk to you,” she informed him bluntly.

“Oh, my lovely?” Sebell propped himself up on an elbow. He likely thought it some offence contrived from the air; he knew her history, knew her misgivings and unease here in small holds where the smell of the sea never went away. She proffered the scrolls, and he raised his sun-bleached brows at the staff and notes traversing the pages. “You _have_ been busy today, pet.” His eyes jerked in their sockets as he scanned the work, brows furrowing in concentration as he progressed. His lips pursed to whistle.

“I have, but not in the way you think.” Menolly leaned forward, shifting the restless Beauty from her lap. She proceeded to relate her encounter with Kirie the previous night. He nodded corroboration; little escaped Sebell. Menolly then described in concise details her efforts of the morning.

“It’s not our place to interfere,” Sebell warned gently, placing a bronzed hand on her shoulder. “The boy receives adequate care where he is. No reason to meddle, Menolly.”

Menolly sprang to her feet. “Dosed on fellis and stuck in a corner? Left on his own to slit his wrists? _More_ fellis, being told he’s a trouble when he can’t do a thing about that?” Her hair was a wild copper halo around her face, flushed in anger. “I’d hardly call that ‘adequate care!’”

“What would you have me do?” Sebell implored, putting his hands on her arms as he looked full in her face. “We’re here to make peace, not stir up unnecessary trouble.”

“But it is necessary!” Menolly half-shouted. She snatched up the bundle of hides, flourished them in her spouse‘s face. “These songs, he wrote these songs!” She laughed, and the sound was tipped by a wild edge that sent a shiver even down her own back. “Sebell, if for nothing else, we need him. The Hall needs composers like him.” She cocked her head to contemplate his expression. “I’m sure you remember the frantic search that ensued to locate Petiron’s mysterious apprentice, with no more wont than a few lines such as these.” His eyes flicked away from her—in shame, perhaps, of knowing she’d pinioned him with living proof? Menolly pressed her advantage. “This boy is right here, Sebell, within our grasp. I won‘t lose him, not when I can help it, not when we need him so badly. Let me help him. Please.” Her left hand was clenched into a painful fist.

Sebell sat heavily on the edge of the bed, expelling his breath in a loud gust. “Do what you will.” He pinched the bridge of his nose; his gold-thatched head hung wearily from his shoulders. “It‘s only idiocy to try and stop you, but I will advise caution.”

Menolly sank down beside him, circling an arm around his waist. “I love you,” she whispered, brushing his ear with her lips.

He drew her closer. “The Holder will not take kindly to this. He looks unfavorably on the Harper Hall in any case. I doubt kidnapping his son will appease him any towards us.”

“Oh dear.” Menolly frowned suddenly. “This will make a horrible mess for Reed; I hope he doesn’t suffer too much for it.”

Sebell barked out a laugh. “Menolly-girl, Reed knew what he was getting into when he took the post.” Abruptly he grabbed her feet, and feather-light, traced his fingertips up the hyper-sensitive soles. Menolly shrieked with laughter and snatched her knees up to her chest.

“That’s not fair!” she yelped, words muffled by irrepressible giggles: ever since their skinning, the nerves of her feet remained exaggeratedly sensitive.

“Oh, I think it is.” He graced her with a crooked smile, joining her on the pillows and leaning in to kiss her mouth. Drawing away, he murmured, “If you fret so over a journeyman, this boy is lucky indeed to have found a place in your heart.”


	4. Chapter 4

By the time Sebell had gone in the morning, Menolly had enlisted T’gran’s willing aid: he had remained on her request once her plan began to form. Sebell’s only stipulation had been that, once her mind was made up, she make the move as expeditiously as possible, and she agreed. She did, nonetheless, take the time to explain the situation to Reed, the journeyman who would be left behind. All to the good if he was prepared for the storms she had brought down on his head, and the extra time gave Sebell that many more miles between holds. She did not risk a visit to the kitchens, however, catching the flash of dark hair in the downstairs corridor.

It was just before the ninth bell when Menolly knocked on Jessom’s door for the second time in as many days, and she hoped he would be awake, aware enough to listen.

He was waiting for her as if he had been up for hours, which, Menolly noted with the rumpled bedclothes, he probably had.

“Thank you,” the boy murmured as she slipped into his chamber. “I hoped you’d be back.” Beauty chirruped her pleasure and swooped from Menolly’s shoulder to light on the headboard. The Harper smiled. Perhaps it was her own natural inclination towards the blind lad, perhaps it was Beauty’s own, but none the less he had found a worthy friend in the little creature. And small wonder, with the sensitivity and sensibility of his works…the nub of an idea began to form at the back of Menolly’s mind.

“I keep my promises, Jessom.” she stated by way of answer. He sat beside the wind hole, Thread-shutters flung wide and lashed in place. At her entrance, he had pulled himself up the bedpost, and stood looking at her with those [empty brown] eyes. “I want to show you something.” She took his healing wrists and drew him down.

With an ease of movement that would never be taken for granted, Menolly opened up her curled left hand, spreading fingers and tendons and sinew to the very reaches of their capacity. There was still a ductile ache that tugged in the pit of muscle, after all these years, but at least its dimensions and dexterity came close to that of its unmarred partner. She gazed on the old wound; a reminiscence washed clean of bitterness, and said, “Give me your hand.”

Menolly guided Jessom’s agile fingers up and down the sinuous plane of her palm, detailing the lines and splits of taut skin. He traced the rucked edges of the raised scar-tissue, the wide stripe that bisected the flat of her hand; the ghosts of calluses on his fingertips caught and snagged the irregular surface of the fat weal. Jessom swallowed audibly. Menolly watched his face, watched his pale eyebrows pulling together, watched as his lips twisted shut.

“When I was [fifteen],” she began. “A knife slipped in my grasp.”

She closed her hand, abruptly, catching his fingers in that ghastly parody of a fist, the crumpled, lopsided form the hand had been constrained to in its crippled, misbegotten healing. She felt him jerk, but to his credit he did not pull away. With the hand twisted, the scar itself bent double, a puckered silvery mouth, a constraining shackle. Its ropy surface, twisted, became a roiling streak of keloidal knobs and whorls.

“I was told I would never play again.” Menolly forced out those words in a toneless voice and continued deliberately, steadily. “Jessom, it was a lie. It was a cruel, spiteful lie.” She clasped his hand in both of hers, scrutinizing his expression for the hints she so wished to find there. “I have a proposition for you. There is always a place at the Harper Hall for those with abilities such as yours. In truth, there is always want for minds like yours. I offer an apprenticeship in the Crafthall, free of ties to Balen Hold.”

Menolly watched as an unrefined joy spread across Jessom’s face, and a certain guardedness too. Presented with the promise of a dream fulfilled, she too would test the ground cautiously, wary for the patch that would give way. Seeing his fear, she grasped his hands, imploring, “Don’t waste yourself here in this hidebound [sinkhole], Jessom. Pern _needs_ work like yours. Don’t you want out?”

There was a silent war in the pressure of his teeth, pressing the lower lip between them, in the slightly panicked darting of sightless eyes. Of course there were obligations to tie him here, obligations left unsevered by his infirmity. The matter of independence from his father, and withdrawal of his inheritance, and the unspoken cords of duty that had prompted Menolly to seek him out in the first place. Aware of the plight of the thwarted lovers, him and Kirie both, Menolly murmured deftly, “An altering of situation is always possible for those who are willing to work. Many of the headwoman’s kitchen-girls are dependants, you know.”

The softened look of shock confirmed to Menolly that Kirie had indeed been back to these rooms in her absence, and had expanded upon or at least retold her encounter with the Harper. She intruded on Jessom‘s silence and forced him to weigh desire against fear. “If you mean to take the offer—”

“I’ll go.”

 

It was a simple matter then to gather the few effects needed for the journey, and strap on borrowed wherhides. T’gran assured the lad that it would be no bother to jump back alone, with the protection of his status, to gather his remaining possessions, but Jessom shook his head. “Nothing here worth bothering with.” he’d said quietly, running a hand over the folder of scores that Menolly bound up with care against the cracking cold of _between_.

A small hubbub had gathered in the open square around Branth, who knelt very still as oblivious children clambered on his short forelegs. The three of them made an awkward train; T’gran at the fore, shouldering his way through with awe and his loud voice; Jessom, clutching at the straps of the rider’s wherhide jacket ; Menolly trailed after, still holding the youth‘s hand in hers. Her fair wheeled in the air above her head—too excited with all the bustle and her own anticipation to behave and perch quietly on Branth’s neck ridges—as garish an advert of import as if she’d drummed it from the heights. The Holder, fortuitously, had put out to sea with the early tide, and so knew nothing of the duplicitous, though essential, venture; of the household, only his lady remained to protest the theft of her son to the Craft. Menolly had anticipated trouble at the last; the Lady put her in mind of Mavi. Indeed, she shoved her way through the small throng to get at her prodigal child and the offending captors, shrieking like a watch-wher, her bun gone to wisps. She protested stridently, but the brown rider silenced her efficiently with a sweep of his hand.

“Lady,” he said firmly, “if you would oppose the Harper Hall’s right, pray lodge a complaint with them. Until such time as the Masterharper reviews the case, you have no right to obstruct the prerogatives of the Craft. Stand aside.” His position as a Benden rider afforded him the startled obedience that such an order from Menolly or even Sebell would never have produced. The tawny bulk of Branth’s head, swinging over to snort of puff of phosphorous breath over their heads, certainly carried pleasant weight.

With his mother’s cries beating tinnily down on them, Jessom shrank back a little, and Menolly squeezed his hand reassuringly. If he broke, it would be now, she was certain. If Maavi or Alemi had begged her to remain at Half Circle, would she have? Menolly shook her head to dislodge these unpleasantries. Alemi, perhaps, regretted her flight, but if he truly cared he would keep his own council. And scored to death or a Master in a faraway Crafthall, Menolly supposed made no difference to the Lady Holder who bore and suckled her. She urged the men forward, pressing up against Jessom’s back and adding her presence to the defense. The Mastercrafter’s knot on her shoulder did some to suppress the outrage, despite it being Harper’s blue. Though T’gran was an even man, Menolly saw the color rising in his collar as he grew impatient. Branth let loose a small bugle, producing a mass jump backwards and not a few screams. Shunting the boy betwixt them, the small party dove through the evanescent parting of the crush, shadowed by the undulating, raucous cloud of gold and bronze, brown and blue and green. Jessom’s feet scrabbled for purchase as the burly rider hauled him up the fighting straps by the wrist, and Menolly climbed up after, wriggling like a tunnel snake to escape the small fingers that snatched at her boot straps. Among the two of them, they rigged Jessom into place, and Menolly settled herself before him, pulling his arms around her own waist as Branth stirred up the granite dust in the yard with preparatory sweeps of his huge wings. Take-off was a risky feat, bogged down in the midst of such a gathering, and T’gran bent over the ridges, patting and praising his clever beast when they hung skyborn and not a spectator scratched. Menolly felt Jessom sigh mightily against her back, and pressed his fingers gently. There were no words for this, she knew. Menolly the Meddler was an epithet she’d justly earned, but one didn’t have to be a Harper to understand that sometimes a knowing silence was all the words that were needed. She patted the boy’s wrist bracingly. This was a peace Jessom would have to construct for himself, a compromise no one else could write out for him. She could only pray that it would find him easily.

The fire lizards winked out of sight, and Menolly tugged Jessom’s elbows, pulling his embrace tighter in anticipation of the all-numbing cold of _between_.


	5. Chapter 5

It was the oddest sensation, Jessom thought as the ground dropped away. He took comfort in the chitterings of the fire lizards keeping pace with the mighty beast, in the warmth of dragonhide beneath the saddle, the bunching of long muscles. The blurred humming of the crowd fell away as they rose, and he heard the sweep of the dragon’s expansive wings, and the wind rushing in his ears as they climbed. They leveled off, and the woman Menolly pulled his arms crushingly close around her, so that he tasted the musk of her gear so close to his face. The world ripped open at the seams, and became nothing.

Jessom had heard —and played —many ballads concerning black _between_. He had been half-expecting the sudden shock, but when it came he was totally unprepared. There was the bone-numbing, all-crushing cold of _between_ , a cold so deep and profound that Jessom wondered how anything could survive it, could exist within it, even for the short amount of time that jumps a-dragonback lasted. There was no sensation. It was as if he had ceased to exist. His world was always dark, but this was a blackness so profound, it put death to shame. There was no afferent input, not sound, not touch, not smell or intuition. He hung, suspended in space, a formless shape. He knew his arms were latched about the middle of the stranger who had turned his life upside down in a matter of days. He knew he sat astride a dragon, the most revered of creatures on Pern. Other than that knowledge, of what _should be_ , there was no awareness, no confirmation. And yet… In the emptiness, Jessom thought, so faint that he doubted he could imagine it, he heard the tiny chittering of ten tiny dragons, the bat-like swoop of thin wings. Listening —he thought it was listening —even harder, Jessom fancied he could make out the thudding of a larger pair, a set of sails flapping in the absolute darkness. There was a deep, rumbly chuckle in the depths of his mind. Jessom felt that distinction clearly; the sounds were transmitted directly to his skull, in no way translated through the shafts and membranes of his ears. These sounds lacked vibration, and did not exist in the spaceless infinity of impossible _between_.

In the breathless dark, the nonspace where nothing existed, Jessom thought he heard, somewhere very, very far away, someone scream. In this depthless nothing, where there was no sound and no touch, a numbness that did not permit the sensory input required for pain, there was a piercing cry of agony.


	6. Chapter 6

The reversal of sensation was so abrupt that for a moment longer Jessom forgot to breathe. Every sense crashed back to him with shocking clarity: the sun was too warm on his upturned face and he fancied he could feel every stitch of clothing he wore. The spicy incense of dragon smothered him, aided by the stinging traces of firestone. He felt the momentum of the dragon’s glide slaking off as the enormous animal backwinged, slowing the decent from on high. The wind buffeted Jessom as he fought it for air. He was still pressed close to the Harper, and felt her rigid back heaving against him, as if she sobbed, or struggled as he did to readjust to the warmth and air and _life_ after the overwhelming void that was _between_.

There was a shock as the dragon touched down, and Jessom was assaulted by a multitude of unfamiliar sounds. Before he could quite get his bearings, the fire lizards descended as one, and someone—Beauty, he thought, he recognized her timbre—creeled in his face. It was not a sound of joy or relief, or even anger, and as they swarmed, crooning in a soft, almost tender manner, as to frightened young, Jessom wondered at the fact that Menolly still didn’t seem able to catch her breath.

“Menolly!” T’gran’s voice was too loud, too close. “Branth says you’re hurt…?” There was an intake of breath, and a confused fuss of movement as the rider tore at the fighting straps that bound both Jessom and the Harper to the saddle. As the cords loosened, she bent away from him, her body curling over the pommel. Jessom wondered if the low whimper he heard came from her or her fire lizards.

“Someone help me with her!” the rider shouted down to the courtyard, as Jessom felt the warmth of the woman’s body pulled away. “I’ve got you.” Jessom barely caught the murmur as T’gran descended the fighting straps, obviously carrying the incapacitated woman in his arms. “Silvina!”

The dragon shifted, to make the passage easier on his encumbered rider no doubt, and Jessom lurched forward, planting his hands on the saddle to steady himself against the movement. The leather was still warm, and, Jessom realized, wet. He licked his lips; there was no mistaking the coppery tang that stuck to his fingers.

The courtyard far below was a muddy racket, a querulous choir of anxious voices all yelling at once. Straddling the neck of the huge dragon, Jessom hung onto the one thread he knew, sifting out the brownrider’s bellows as he linked arms with an obliging journeyman, dividing the burden between them. The tumult moved away across some distance, receding into a reasonable volume, and Jessom lost all understanding of his situation, bereft of the only landmarks given him in this strange, abrupt new state of affairs he found himself in.

Branth swung his head around to face the boy; Jessom felt the warmth of the huge face so close to his, could smell the hint of old firestone on the brown’s heavy, damp breath. Unthinkingly, he reached out with his sullied hand until he tapped soft dragonhide, and scratched at the bony ridges. The motion was simple, easy, and reflexive; as much for the dragon as for himself. The blasphemy of this action did not dawn on Jessom until it was too late. Appalled, he snatched his hand away, but Branth leaned into the withdrawn touch, impressing a plaintive query on his lone passenger. Not wanting to offend the awesome creature, Jessom obliged, and as the minutes dragged on, his ministrations grew less awkward. T'gran did not return, and if the sight of a brown dragon in the Harper Hall's courtyard was an out-of-place occurrence, no one made mention of it. In the relative quiet, Jessom sat there, forgotten. Once again, the darkness of his debility was as oppressive as ever. He felt as blind and as helpless as he ever had in his life.


	7. Chapter 7

Sebell came as soon as he heard.

It was by luck he heard the drumroll, lodging at the small hold just a day’s ride southeast of Balen, and had been shocked when, after the pattern that marked the missive as urgent, he recognized his own name in a request that he return to the Harper Hall posthaste. Kimi had been agitated, though not to the point of disappearing on him, and he began to worry. When the tip of a wing-sweep detached itself from the sky and descended on him, Sebell was astonished to find that _he_ was the focus of their search. The young man, riding a High Reaches blue, informed Sebell that he was to obliged to provide the Harper with transport to his crafthall, and performed his task expeditiously. Though Sebell raked him for answers in the few moments aloft before and after the jump, he was unable to comply, knowing little more than Sebell himself, other than that a Benden rider had touched down at High Reaches with the instruction that a spare wing was to go out on reconnaissance to locate the missing Harper.

“Thank goodness.” Silvina accosted him almost as soon as his escort popped back into _between_. “You’ll talk some sense into that girl. She’s done nothing but lie there, white as death.”

“What?” he demanded aggressively, pulling away to stare. She adroitly resumed her grip on his arm, ushering him up the broad stairs at the [west] of the courtyard. The stairs led to many places, but ultimately, Sebell thought with a sinking belly, to Oldive’s infirmary. “What’s happened to Menolly?” Kimi squawked in alarm and dove to curl herself around his neck, her eyes whirling with dizzying speed, a sickly yellow.

As he followed her up the stairway, taking the steps two and three at a time, Silvina explained as concisely as possible; Menolly’s return on Branth many hours before, and her sudden, unexpected miscarriage.

“Shards.” Sebell put a hand to his eyes, leaning against the wall for support. He felt numb.


	8. Chapter 8

“Menolly.”

At the sound of his voice, her head jerked without her consent. The anguish in his face was too much to bear, and her eyes skittered away.

 _“Taking a short dragon-ride.”_ How many times had that trite little phrase fluttered in one ear, and just as quickly out of the other? She had used it herself, in a faintly disparaging way; though her worldview had been greatly widened by travel and training, she had on occasion made judgments on the attitudes of weyrfolk. She had the gall to patronize such nonchalant usage of the atrocities of suicide and abortion. She had the insolence to pass judgment, and was no better herself. She had not even known to be careful.

“Menolly, I’m so sorry.” He fell beside her on the cot and seized the hand that lay limp on the sheet, chafing it between his own.

The friction hurt, like a hundred nettle-pricks. His hand was too hot; Menolly did not realize the contrast came from her own chill. She blinked at him, faltering for the explanation she knew he was owed, the feeble excuse, the screaming accusation. The words came out as a hoarse whisper, in a voice unlike hers at all. “I didn’t know.”

There was a long interval of charged silence. Kimi leaned in, eyes whirling with mixed emotion, to cock her head at the blotchy-faced, mat-haired mess of her master’s spouse. Sebell drew in an unsteady breath, and redoubled his ministrations to her cold hands.

“And how could you, love? Silvina said it'd have been a wonder if—” He didn’t seem able to form the words, let alone force them out. His weather-tanned face held only concern and sympathy, for her; the lines of his mouth were twisted by a great chagrin. He seemed to be steeling himself; he heaved a breath that rattled out, like an unsettled wind over the sea-cliffs.

“We—” he tripped over the words in a very un-Harperish way. “When you've...recovered...we, we can try again.”

Menolly jerked her hands away so abruptly that their backlash left marks on her collarbone. “Get _out_!” she screamed. “Don't _touch_ me! Get out!”

“Menolly!” Sebell's cry held real alarm as she rebuffed him, turned her face from him.

Her hands flapped hysterically as she made to beat him off; Beauty screeched out a shrill emphasis on her mistress‘s words, rearing back and buffeting her wings as if she meant to attack. All nine were in the room of a sudden, a wheeling rainbow of lashing tongues and brandished talons. The whole fair took up the warning in an eery hiss punctuated by bays of terror and keens of sorrow that took her emotion and bounced it around between them like light in crystal.

Kimi stood up on Sebell's shoulder and gave a soprano bugle that cut through the chaos, and Sebell fought his way to her, wrapping his strong arms around her, constraining her beating fists to her sides. Menolly broke.

The tears came in earnest now. She leaned full against him, making a wet blotch on the shoulder of his wherhide, and he compressed her into the hollow of his embrace, smothering her tremors by degrees.

“Don't you understand?” she sobbed, “I _killed_ someone.” He stroked string-calloused fingers down her hair, but she didn't notice. “We don't _do_ that, where I come from. We just...don't.”

He didn't understand. “Menolly, it was an accident. You hear me?” He shook her, leaning across to fix her gaze, but she turned her face away from him. “And no wonder, with you a-dragonback as often as Mirrim...”

Menolly was not in the mood for cold comforts such as these. “I didn't know.” The repetition of those absurd words was flat. And just like that, the anger was back, burning hot and making her hands clench in the rough sheet. “The First Shell, Sebell, I _didn't know_!” Mavi had not spoken often of men with any of her daughters, let alone what comes after. Menolly had always assumed the woman thought her empiric induction to wifehood was good enough for anyone. Once or twice, in her perpetual foul humor towards her gawky youngest child, she had commented disparagingly how Menolly's narrow hips would be the death of her in childbed and oh, wouldn't that serve her right, but that was the sum of it. And, coming to the Harper Hall at an age when many holdbred girls were mothers already, it had never occurred to Menolly to ask. Oh, she knew her way around well enough, but she had never given a thought to the bearing of children. None at all.

He  was wise enough not to say anything at all, instead simply brushing away this new wash of warm and bitter tears, but even that was too much. Angrily, Menolly pushed his hands away, tried to push him off the cot as well, but when he did not budge, she said, “Leave me.” His face, for an instant held shock and hurt, before taking on a stoniness that was unreadable. “Please,” she tried to gentle her tone, to take away the sting she still felt. “I need to be alone tonight.”

Kimi squawked her hurt confusion and sprang _between_ , belying Sebell's true emotions despite his resolute lack of expression. As he turned his back on her and promptly retreated from the empty ward, Menolly refused to be even the least bit repentant. So he went on and sat up the night in the apartments they shared when at the Hall, and she lay dozing in and out of shallow sleep in the anonymity of Oldive's infirmary.

After the last faint noises had faded from the courtyard, after the mid-watch bells had rung, Silvina tred softly down the ranks of empty beds to here Menolly still sat, dry-eyed. Beauty raised her head from her dejected position in her friend's lap where listless fingers had long since ceased to stroke her, and chirped quizzically. The headwoman perched at the bedside and took the young woman's hand.

“Oh, Menolly-girl,” was all she said, once touching the cold and tear-stained cheek, and they sat there in silence for a handful of minutes. She did not try to give Menolly a list of girls who had come through these doors in straits just like hers, nor did she spout some pragmatic nonsense that would not have made her feel any better. She simply remained there, uninterupting in the dark, and shared the younger woman's silent vigil of mourning for a slice of that cold and horrid night.


	9. Chapter 9

It was not until two days later that any thought was spared for the abandoned kitchen drudge. For the short remainder of that first day after ferrying Menolly and the lad, T'gran was understandably preoccupied, as a surprising number of people sought him out, demanding details he wasn't sure he ought to give. The next day held a heavy fall of Thread of Nerat and Keroon, keeping him and Branth and his netire wing well busy. A fleeting resolve as he tumbled into his sleeping furs at nightfall was brought rudly full force over his morning klah, and the brownrider swore mightily. T'gran begged leave of his wingleader for a personal errand, still mentally cursing his lapse: it had seemed to damned important to the young mastercomposer. Briefly— _very_ briefly—T'gran considered whether he oughtn't to _time_ it, but quickly brushed the impulse aside like a pesky buzzing fly. No, he could only make the best of events as they lay now.

A measure of unease settled into his gut, nonetheless, as his brown descended once more on the hurriedly emptied courtyard, though both he and Branth were received with all the honor that was their due, the upturned dirty faces of the children of millers and fisherfolk incumbent with the usual wondering fear and awe...even if these faces held a little more fear than was usual. A direct inquiry after the girl accorded him only stony looks. Not guarded, and not quite resentful, only stony, like the hard, salt-pitted outcroppings that buttressed the small hold. The ladyholder fixed this gaze on him for a pause that lingered overlong and simply tossed him a careless shrug. “She is gone.” was all she would say. Extending his search into the kitchens themselves only brought him stony looks of a different breed, and variations on the theme of 'gone.' Over the steaming cook-kettles he caught the bitter mutter of “Turned out,” but he could glean nothing more from a staff suddenly gone surly against him when he could provide little better explaination as to why he sought the girl Kirie other than that he did. Dropping Menolly's name loosened a few tongues, albiet angry ones, and T'gran bore the indignance as evenly as he could manage, which turned out to be not very. It was in a sour temper that he straddled Branth's neck ridges and braced for take-off, quitting the hold much later than he had expected too, and much sooner than he would have liked. The bare fact of the matter was that the girl was nowhere to be found, and he could hardly scour the region looking for her; she could have got to anywhere in the day-and-a-half window in which she 'd vanished. The best he could do would be to pass along a rough description to the sweep-riders who would be working the surrounding areas, for what little that was worth. Harpers on the ground would have infinitely better chances. The rider bit his underlip in chagrin. And Menolly. He must tell Menolly. ...But not just yet.  Not, let the poor girl get _some_ color back before suffering another disappointment. He'd talk to the High Reaches sweeps, and inform the Harper Hall perhaps in the morning. The craft could use the information of his failure as they chose, and anyhow, there wasn't anything more he could do just now. He could scarcely see how so short a delay would matter; she was only _one girl_ and must be fine, couldn't have gotten far. Branth, with the unconcerned contentment of dragons reaffirmed his conviction, and couldn't they _please_ go somewhere warm and sandy in the meantime? He'd like a good wallow.

T'gran couldn't help laughing. _Soon enough, you great lazy beast As soon as we've finished here_. He would take the immediate measures out of common courtesy. This Kirie had seemed integral to Menolly's schemes; certainly she had seemed overly concerned about her. Yet, T'gran could hardly figure how a single drudge, with no immediately discernable significance—musical or otherwise—could matter so much to the harper.

Branth surprised him by commenting, _She matters to the blind one._


End file.
